


Our Struggle

by raspberrycoffeecake



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 23:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6170131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberrycoffeecake/pseuds/raspberrycoffeecake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is ending.  What are our favorite agents going to do about it?  My Struggle II with a few tweaks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by Aloysia Virgata's fantastic Babylon rewrite, Acheron, to try my hand at My Struggle II. I loved many parts of the season finale, but many parts didn't sit well with me, so I wrote this based on some of the ideas that were running around in my head. Agent Malik and Agent Weinstein belong to Aloysia Virgata.

She woke up with her head on his chest as the early morning sunlight peeked its way through the bedroom window. They had only been doing this again for the last week, but it was already difficult to imagine how she had managed to get through two years without waking up next to his warm body. She sat up a little and leaned over him - he was still fast asleep. She gently kissed him on the cheek then lightly ran two fingers down his jawbone.

“Hey,” she said, kissing him lightly on the lips.

His eyes fluttered open and he smiled sleepily. “Hey, Scully.” He reached up for her cheek and pulled her down for a slow, deep kiss. 

When she pulled away and lay back next to him, she asked, “Do you want to ride in with me?”

He smiled and shook his head, leaning over her to kiss her softly on the nose. “No, Tad’s coming here this morning. He said he had something important to tell me. I’ll be in around noon.”

She made a face to show him what she thought of Tad O’Malley but, secretly, she didn’t mind. Whatever ridiculous theories Tad was spouting, Mulder was clearly in a much better place than he had been six weeks ago. He might not be as skeptical of Tad’s rubbish as she would like, but he wouldn’t go head-over-heels for it the way he did the last time. This was her Mulder again - spooky, but not unhinged. And maybe it was good for him to be chasing down leads, now that they were back to work.

Reluctantly, she got out of bed and headed toward the shower, pleased that she had moved her full-sized toiletries from her apartment a few days ago. She wasn’t quite ready to clear the place out and move back here completely, but the process had definitely begun.

When she returned to the bedroom, showered, dressed, and ready for work, she knelt down beside the bed, where Mulder had fallen back asleep. She kissed him lightly on the lips and he groggily moved his hand to her face.

“Join me for lunch when you get to the office?”

He smiled up at her. “Sounds perfect.”

She gave him one last peck on the cheek and closed the bedroom door behind her.

***

When she walked into the basement office, Agent Weinstein was leaning on the desk, reading through a thick paper file.

“Good morning, Agent Scully,” she said as Scully put down her purse and draped her coat over the chair back. “Malik and I could use your help on a case we just received. Over a hundred veterans showed up at hospitals this morning showing signs of anthrax poisoning. Doctors are puzzled, and CDC asked us to get involved. I’m about to go over to Our Lady of Sorrows to take a look at one of the patients. It’s a little bit weird-“

“You mean spooky?” Scully smiled at her. “I’d be happy to assist, if I can.” She picked her jacket up again, slung it over her arm, and followed Agent Weinstein out the door.

***

The three veterans who had been admitted to Our Lady of Sorrows this morning were in the same ward, all conscious but sporting large lesions on their upper arms. Agent Weinstein walked over to a brawny woman who couldn’t have been older than thirty-five. Scully approached one of the men, who had a pained expression on his face as she bent over him. He was a little older - forty, maybe - with short brown hair and blue eyes. 

She smiled at him as gently as she could. “I’m Dr. Scully. I’ve been asked to run a few tests on you. I’ll need to draw some blood, if that’s OK.”

He tried to smile back, but it was clear that he was in a lot of pain. “All day, doctors have been coming by to run tests on us. When are you going to know what’s causing this?”

Honesty was always the best policy, right? Scully looked at him with a more serious expression. “I don’t know. Soon, I hope. Just try to relax, OK?”

After they had taken blood from each of the patients, Scully and Weinstein walked down the hallway to the lab.

“So…any theories?” Weinstein asked.

Scully sighed, wishing Mulder were here. This was always the part he did best.

“Some, but I don’t want to go too far until we’ve run some tests.” A pause. “Do we know if any of these veterans were deployed overseas?”

Weinstein checked the file. “These three we just saw all were…I don’t know about the others.”

“OK. I know that soldiers usually get a number of vaccinations, including one for anthrax, before they’re sent to certain parts of the world. Could there be some kind of connection?”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure yet. But let’s hope we find something helpful in these samples.”

***

It was one o’clock before Scully finally got back to the office. She hadn’t gotten a reply to the text she had sent Mulder, telling him she would be late, but she didn’t really expect one. He would get the message, and if he was hungry, he would go ahead without her - and if he wasn’t, he would wait.

She assumed the former had happened when she walked into the room and he wasn’t there. She was a little surprised that he hadn’t left a note - something he always took great pleasure in doing, coming up with impossibly flowery ways to say the most mundane things - but he was probably just distracted by his meeting with Tad. She hoped Tad hadn’t said anything too upsetting.

As she was sat back down to read her emails and began to consider going for lunch on her own, the phone rang. Despite having worked here already for six weeks, the door still had only Mulder’s name on it - so, like old times, she answered for him.

“Agent Mulder’s phone.”

“Dana?” The voice on the other end of the line was familiar. “It’s Tad O’Malley. Is Mulder there with you?”

“No,” she replied, a little bit of concern audible in her voice.

“You’d better get over here quickly.”

***

“What happened here?” Tad was standing in the kitchen, watching Scully survey the damage as she walked in. The living room was a mess: furniture was overturned, small objects broken, papers scattered everywhere.

“It was like this when I got here. I was supposed to meet Mulder this morning, but he never showed. The door was open,” he added, a little apologetically, although he probably didn’t know that the house had once been hers too, and was now in the process of becoming her home once more.

“Did you try calling him?” Scully asked, not expecting much.

Tad responded by pointing to the partly cracked cell phone lying on the counter. So much for that.

Scully’s mind was moving quickly now, running through possibilities of what could have happened between when she left for work and when Tad arrived. She tried not to allow her fear for Mulder overwhelm her rational assessment of the situation, although as each second passed, that was becoming more difficult.

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked, jolted out of her thoughts by Tad’s last comment.

“I said, I wanted to talk to Mulder about the veterans with anthrax poisoning we started seeing last week.”

“Anthrax poisoning? I was just investigating three cases in DC.”

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Soldiers all receive anthrax vaccines when they’re deployed overseas - all of them will start showing symptoms in the next few days.”

Scully paused, watching his face across the room from where she stood. “What do you mean, all of them? You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, veterans, active duty troops…”

“That’s what I wanted to tell Mulder. It’s starting. They’ve activated something that will break down our immune systems. In a week, a month, I don’t know, we’ll all be dying of measles, mumps, the flu.”

Scully looked at him for a long moment, trying to reconcile what she knew to be true about the human body and what she had seen at the hospital this morning. Wondering if she should even ask Tad who he meant by “they.”

When she was finally able to speak, she looked away from him, focusing her eyes on the counter where Mulder’s phone was still lying. In a quiet voice, she said, “That’s ridiculous. You can’t just trigger something to break down someone’s immune system. It violates everything we know about how the immune system works.”

Her tone betrayed her uncertainty, and Tad didn’t try to argue with her. Instead, he looked straight at her, catching her eyes, and said “I don’t know what happened to Mulder, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t have something to do with what’s going on out there. We’ve got to find him.” He picked up the phone from the counter, and stopped a few feet away from her, stretching out his hand to give her the phone.

Having a concrete task to focus on steadied her. She took the phone from his hand and said, looking straight at him, “We will find, him, Mr. O’Malley. Now, I suggest you focus on doing whatever you do to try and figure out what’s really going on here.” With that, she turned and walked out the door, her mind already moving on to what she needed to do next.

***

When she got back to the office, Agent Malik was sitting awkwardly on the edge of Mulder’s chair, looking through documents Mulder had haphazardly left on the desk the day before. He looked up as she came in.

“Agent Scully, AD Skinner put me in charge of finding Agent Mulder. He told me what you told him on the phone, but I was hoping you might be able to give me a few more details. When did you last see Agent Mulder?”

Scully felt her cheeks become hot at the question, but she had been expecting it. They needed to have all the information in order to find him quickly. Holding something back wouldn’t help things. And it wasn’t as though details about their relationship, both true and false, hadn’t already run through the FBI gossip mill ad nauseam years before. Now they were back, she was sure details were resurfacing.

“This morning around 7 am, Agent Malik. He was still in bed when I left for work.” 

Agent Malik raised an eyebrow, but let her continue without interrupting.

“He said that Tad O’Malley - we met him a few weeks ago, he has an internet show devoted to conspiracy theories - was coming over to talk to him this morning. He said that he would be in the office by lunchtime. He never arrived at the office, and around one this afternoon Mr. O’Malley called the office and asked me to meet him at Mulder’s house.” 

It felt strange to say “Mulder’s house,” after all these years, but she still wasn’t ready to call it “our home” yet - especially in such an official context. Again, Agent Malik said nothing and allowed her to continue, writing a few comments on his notepad.

“When I arrived, around 2 o’clock, I saw furniture broken and papers thrown everywhere. It looked as though there had been a fight. Mr. O’Malley said that Mulder was already gone and the house looked…” She paused and swallowed, then continued, “…like there had been a fight. Things were broken, furniture was overturned. Mulder’s phone was cracked and lying on the counter. I left and called AD Skinner on my way over here.”

Scully handed the phone to Agent Malik, and he took it, turning it over in his hand to examine it. “Thank you, Agent Scully. I’ll probably be in your office for the next few hours, looking for anything that could point me toward where he went. Meanwhile, if you don’t have anything more pressing, I know that Agent Weinstein could use your help again at the hospital. She says they’ve gotten ten more patients, all presenting with the same symptoms as the first three.”

***

By the time Scully arrived back at the hospital, every bed in the ward was full of men and women ranging in age from in various states of consciousness, all presenting with the same lesions on their arms. Scully’s heart sank when she saw that the man she had drawn blood from this morning was covered in a nasty rash and coughing every few seconds. Things had clearly gotten worse since she had left.

As she entered the room, Weinstein walked over to her and whispered. “All of these people were deployed overseas at some point. It’s got to be related to their vaccinations. But the timing doesn’t make any sense. Some of them were vaccinated twenty years ago. I don’t understand.”

Scully glanced around the room once more, then looked back at Weinstein. “I think I’m starting to have an idea, but I don’t like it. Have you collected blood samples from the new patients?”

“Yes, but none of them show anything new. They all look completely normal except for the anthrax. Although…” Weinstein paused. “The white blood cell count is extremely low for all of the patients. It’s as if they just stopped producing white blood cells when they got sick. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Actually, I’m afraid it might make too much sense. Let’s go back to the lab and we’ll look at the results in more detail.”

As they were leaving the ward, Scully’s phone rang. Frantically, she fished it out of her purse and jabbed at the green button. The number was blocked.

“Mulder?” she asked, without waiting for the person on the other end of the line to answer.

“No,” a female voice answered. “But I might be able to help you find him.”

Scully paused before responding, trying desperately to identify the voice, knowing that it was someone familiar, from a long time ago…

“Monica?”

“Meet me in front of the Natural History Museum in an hour. I have something important to tell you.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Scully arrived at the museum, it was almost dusk and a light rain had begun to fall. There weren’t many people on the plaza, so Agent Reyes was easy to spot. She rose from the bench where she had been sitting on and walked over to Scully. After a brief pause, Reyes hugged her tightly.

“Dana, it’s been so long.”

“Monica.” A pause, then they separated, and despite the fear she had felt over the last six hours, she couldn’t help smiling a little at her old friend. Reyes led them back to the bench, where they sat close together.

“I tried to look you up when we got back to the Bureau. They said you’d been gone for years, that you’d left in a hurry…”

“It’s a long story. You know my interests have always been a little…well, unusual.” Scully smiled at that. “I was approached by an organization that wanted my expertise for their work. They painted a pretty dire picture of what would happen if the men who were behind your abduction, behind everything that happened to you…” Scully took in a sharp breath and looked away for a second. “…if someone didn’t stop them. So they asked me to leave the Bureau and help them. And that’s what I did. I’m sure you heard John made Section Chief a few years ago.” 

Scully nodded. Agent Doggett hadn’t reached out to them when she and Mulder had first returned to the Bureau, and she imagined that associating with them might not be great for his image, so she hadn’t tried to contact him.

“He’s been helping me from inside, giving me information. That’s how I found out Mulder was missing.”

Scully laughed drily. “Word gets around fast. I only found out he was gone a few hours ago.”

Reyes nodded, and continued. “We don’t have much time, so I’ll just give you the basics. One of our operatives spotted Mulder’s car in South Carolina, near Spartanburg. She didn’t get a good look at him, but she didn’t think he looked great.”

Scully grabbed Reyes’ arm, a little tighter than she meant to. “Why is he in South Carolina? What made him leave so suddenly?”

Monica shook her head. “We don’t know why he decided to go down there - maybe someone tried to get in touch with him.”

Scully thought of their ransacked living room and shuddered. “But you know why he’s there?”

“Yes. This is…this may be shocking to hear, but we’re almost certain Mulder is going to see CGB Spender.”   
“The Cancer Man?”

Reyes nodded.

“But we saw his hideout destroyed by rockets! How did he survive that?”

Reyes shrugged. “It’s amazing what reconstructive surgery can do, when you have all the resources in the world at your disposal. When the conspiracy figured out that you and Mulder had escaped the attack, I guess they decided he was more useful to them alive than dead. He doesn’t look great, but he’s still sharp as ever. If Mulder’s going to see him, I don’t think it can be good.”

“So you’ve seen the Cancer Man since they brought him back?”

“A few times. My work brings me into contact with him every once in a while.”

Scully looked into Reyes’ calm eyes, wondering suddenly what this shadowy organization her friend now worked for could be. She was glad that Reyes seemed willing to help, but she wondered if her loyalties might have shifted somewhat in the years that they had been out of touch. And if Doggett was helping too… Scully shook herself out of her thoughts. Reyes had contacted her and was giving her information, helping her. If this turned out to be just one more piece of the conspiracy, she would deal with that once they had found Mulder. That was still their priority.

Reyes watched Scully, waiting for Scully to collect her thoughts. After a little while, she continued. “You’re helping another agent with a case right now involving anthrax poisoning. Tad O’Malley spoke with you this morning and told you it was part of a bigger conspiracy. Now, if I know you, Dana, right now you’re thinking he’s full of crap.” Scully smiled at that. “But he’s at least partially right. We’re still trying to find a way to stop this, but if we don’t, in less than a week, people around the world are going to be dying from diseases we’ve been able to treat easily for fifty years.”

Reyes looked away for a moment, sighed, then turned back to Scully. “Now, this is the hard part. I didn’t just come to tell you where to find Mulder, although he’s important in all of this. I can’t tell you why because I don’t fully understand it myself, but…we need to find your son.”

Scully felt her throat tighten. “My son? But I don’t even know where he is. And…I gave him up to keep him safe. I’m not bringing him back into this without a good reason.”

Reyes looked sympathetically at Scully. “I know. I wouldn’t ask you this if it weren’t important. But, Dana,” she said, looking, unblinking, into Scully’s eyes, “we’re afraid this might be the end of the world. William might be the only thing can save us. You’ve got to find him.”

Scully looked back at her old friend, unnerved by Reyes’ repeated use of “we” to describe this shadowy organization she now worked for, by her reference to William as a “thing,” wanting to trust her but also afraid that this might be another arm of the conspiracy, out to hurt her family. If they had agents who could spot Mulder several states away, why couldn’t they find William themselves? Why did they need her help? Part of her was hurt, angry that a friend she trusted would bring her son, the child she helped take care of and protect as an infant, into this mess. Part of her wondered whether Reyes really was trying to help her, whether this would be the chance she had subconsciously been hoping for all these years, the excuse to go find him again.

Finally, Scully collected her thoughts enough to ask, “If this is all part of a big conspiracy…why? Why engineer something that, from what you’re telling me, sounds like the mass destruction of the human race? Who’s behind this?”

Reyes shook her head. “We have some ideas, but those are questions for another day. Right now, you need to send Agent Malik down to South Carolina to find Mulder before he gets himself into some serious trouble.” Reyes handed Scully a slip of paper with an address written on it. “We think he’s heading there. And you need to find your son.”

Reyes rested a hand on Scully’s shoulder for a moment as the two women who had been through so much so long ago regarded each other carefully. Then, Scully stood and hugged Reyes again. Reyes kissed her on the cheek, looked her in the eyes once more, and said, “It was good to see you, again, Dana. I hope next time we can meet under better circumstances.” Then, Reyes turned and walked away into the rainy evening. Scully sighed, pushed her purse strap higher onto her shoulder, and steeled herself for a long night at the hospital.

***

When she got back to her car, Scully first called Agent Malik. He didn’t pick up immediately, so she left him a voicemail asking him to meet her at the hospital. Then she searched her phone for Tad’s number, which she had saved as much as a concession to Mulder as anything else. He picked up after three rings.

“Tad, it’s Dana. I just spoke with someone who made me think that maybe your ideas about this anthrax thing might not be so crazy after all.”

“Dana.” She heard exhaustion in his voice, and she wondered whether the last six hours had been as draining for him as they had been for her. “I don’t know that I have much more information than what you already know. We’ve started getting reports of elderly people, children, even strong, otherwise healthy adults presenting at clinics with flu symptoms. This may go down even faster than I thought. I’ll pass along anything I hear that could be helpful.” A pause. “Any word from Mulder?”

“Not yet, but we think we might have a lead. Thanks for…” She didn’t know what she was grateful to him for. Driving her fear and anxiety even higher as she wondered what she was really up against? Being the crazy conspiracy theorist she needed while her own was missing? She shook her head. “…Just, thanks. I’ll be in touch later.”

***

When Scully returned to what had now become the anthrax ward, Agent Weinstein was nowhere to be found, but there were now cots and mattresses set up on every inch of available floor space, and every surface was filled with sleeping bodies. As she entered the room, she saw Nurse Sandeep tending to one of the new patients.

“How do they look, Priya?” Scully said, tapping her gently on the shoulder.

Nurse Sandeep stood up and moved to the door, talking in a low voice. “It’s not good, Dr. Scully. The patients who arrived this morning are in very bad shape,” she said, gesturing to the three beds closest to the door, where the man Scully had tended to this morning was now barely conscious. “And our other wards are filling up with flu patients. It doesn’t make sense - all of these people are young and healthy, and yet we can do nothing for them. I’m afraid we’ll start losing people soon.”

Scully nodded and went to find Agent Weinstein. She found her with Agent Malik in the lab, peering through a microscope as he looked over her shoulder. They both looked up as she closed the door behind her.

“Agent Malik, I think I know where Agent Mulder is. I afraid of what condition you might find him in, of what…” her voice caught for a second, “…of what might happen to him if you don’t get there quickly. There should be a flight to Charleston leaving shortly.”

Malik and Weinstein exchanged a brief, silent farewell, he lay his hand on her shoulder for a second, and then he walked over to her and took the paper Scully held out to him.

“I’ll find him, Agent Scully, and I’ll bring him back to you. Don’t worry about us - you’ll have enough to keep you busy up here.” He nodded at Agent Weinstein, who suddenly sneezed loudly, and Scully realized that she didn’t look much better than some of the patients in the anthrax ward. Scully looked back at Malik and nodded, recognizing his unspoken plea to keep his partner safe while he was gone. As he turned to go, Scully mouthed a silent prayer for Mulder’s safety - for all of their safety. Then she went to work.

***

Scully and Weinstein had been working for so long in the windowless lab, testing blood samples, examining tissue samples, trying everything they could think of to find a cause for this sudden onslaught of diseases, that Scully had no idea whether it was day or night when her phone rang, startling them both back to reality.

She picked up without even checking the caller ID. She was too tired to even hope that it could be Mulder - all she dared to even hope for was that it was someone with some kind of news.

“Dana, it’s Tad.” Oh. Tad again.

“Hi, Tad.”

“I…I just wanted to see whether you’ve found anything.” His voice was too hopeful - and then he broke off in a fit of coughing. 

What did he mean by “anything”? A cure? Mulder? Some way to save the world? She shook her head. “I think we’re onto something,” she said, more optimistically than she felt, “And we’ve sent someone to find Mulder, we’re just waiting to hear from them now.” 

“That’s good to hear. Listen, one of my sources just told me something interesting. Something that may be triggering this epidemic. Have you…” and Tad broke off in a fit of coughing. Scully waited for him to continue, wondering what on Earth he might have dug up.

Finally, the coughing fit was over. “…Have you checked the tap water?”

“Not yet. Thanks for the tip. Are you all OK over there?”

Tad sighed. “Well, we’ll keep filming Truth Squad until the power goes out, but I’m starting to worry about my crew.”

“OK, well, I’ll let you know if I get anywhere.” Despite her frustration with this man who reminded her of Mulder at his most paranoid, she also felt a little sorry for him. And, as much as she hated to admit it, it was nice for Mulder to have someone to talk to again, even if he wasn’t really what most people would call a “friend.” He hadn’t had that kind of connection since they lost the Lone Gunmen, and she hated the idea of him losing this connection too.

“Take care of yourself, Tad.”

“You too, Dana.”

Immediately after she hit the “End Call” button, she turned to Weinstein, who was looking at her with curiosity, despite her obvious exhaustion.

“Agent Weinstein, could you grab one of those sample cups and fill it up halfway with tap water?”

Weinstein complied silently, apparently too beaten down to ask why. She handed the cup to Scully, who ran it through the mass spectrometer. When she got the readout, she rubbed her eyes and blinked, wondering if her sleep deprivation had made her read them wrong. 

No, the numbers were still there when she opened her eyes. “Agent Weinstein, take a look at this.”

Weinstein walked over, looked at the readout, and Scully watched as her eyes opened wider and her jaw dropped. “I think we just might have a lead.”

“I agree,” Scully said, “Let’s get to work.”

***

Hours later, Scully quietly closed the lab door, trying not to wake a sleeping Agent Weinstein, and went in search of sandwiches and coffee from the hospital cafeteria. An hour or two ago, it had become clear that Agent Weinstein was not doing well, and Scully had suggested that she try to get a few hours of sleep. Weinstein agreed immediately, which made Scully even more concerned, since Weinstein clearly had her tendency to ignore her own well-being when there was work to be done.

Every spare inch of space in every ward in the hospital, and even some of the hallways, was packed with bodies, people suffering from every imaginable ailment. When she passed Nurse Sandeep in the corridor, she saw her former colleague’s hollow, tired eyes and couldn’t bring herself to ask how many patients they had already lost. Despite the chaos in the hospital itself, the cafeteria was deserted and the vending machines were still working - Scully wondered if that was only because no one was healthy enough to make their way out of the wards.

When she returned to the lab, Scully set a sandwich and a water bottle beside the cot where Weinstein was lying. She was beginning to unwrap her own sandwich when the power went out. The lights flickered and the lab’s big machines went silent.

A few seconds later, she could hear the low rumble of the generator coming online, the lights came back on, and the lab machines began to hum again. This might hold them for a while, but it was obvious that they were in serious trouble. As Scully took bites of her sandwich and looked at printouts, she wondered how much time they had left before the generator would give out too, and leave them in the dark - both literally and figuratively.

A few minutes later, Scully’s phone rang again. She drew a sharp breath when she saw Agent Malik on the caller ID. She glanced over at Weinstein, who hadn’t stirred at the sound.

“Agent Scully.”

“Agent Scully, it’s Agent Malik. I have Mulder. We’re on the Key Bridge now.” Scully breathed out, feeling relief flow through her body at the thought that, whatever was happening out there, Mulder would be safe.

“Agent Scully, there’s a problem. Mulder’s in pretty bad shape. And traffic on the bridge isn’t moving - I don’t know how long it will take me to bring me to the hospital.”

“Hang on, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Scully nearly shouted, grabbing her medical kit as she hung up the phone. Weinstein’s sleeping form caught her eye, and Scully felt a twinge of regret at leaving her.

She turned away and closed the door behind her. She couldn’t think about that now. Her only thought was Mulder - and how to get to him before it was too late.

***

Scully still went running every day before work, but it had been a long time since she’d run full-out in skirt and heels while carrying her medical kit. Seeing that traffic on the Key Bridge was at a complete standstill, she pulled her car up in a tow zone - they’re probably not enforcing parking violations today, she thought wryly - and began to run.

Her calves were starting to ache and she was gasping for air when she finally spotted Agent Malik standing over a rental car with the passenger door open. And there was the back of Mulder’s head, leaning precariously out the door. She broke into a full sprint.

When she reached him, she didn’t know whether she should call out his name, throw her arms around him, or kiss him, so she did all three at once. Her arms were around his neck and her lips all over his face when his eyes fluttered open and she pulled back to see him give her a weak smile.

“Finally, my doctor’s here,” he said as she pulled him to her chest.

“Yeah. I’m here,” she replied. 

“Cancer Man. I saw him,” Mulder said slowly, as Scully smoothed his hair and kissed the top of his head, his cheeks, his jaw. “He said you were safe, you were protected. Our son, too. He offered to save me, too, but I said no. I don’t want anything that bastard has to offer me,” he said, before breaking into a fit of hacking coughs.

“Shhh, let’s talk about this later,” Scully said, anxious to assess his state. She laid him back on the seat and examined his face and the visible parts of his upper body. Agent Malik had been right. Mulder looked awful. He was breathing heavily and wheezing, his face was pale and he was clearly running a fever. “Drink,” she said, pulling a water bottle out of her kit, and he complied, Scully’s hand helping him lift it to his lips.

As she smoothed down his hair and rubbed his shoulders, her mind was racing, wondering what she could do to slow down the progress of his illness, give her time to find a cure, when suddenly something he had said stuck out in her thoughts. He said you were safe, you were protected. Could that explain why she was still healthy, while everyone else around her was dying? 

She grabbed her kit and frantically began to search for her IV bags and needles. As soon as her hands alighted on them, she tore them out of the bag and began to roll up her sleeves.

“Agent Malik, I need your help!” she found herself nearly screaming. “Get his sleeve rolled up and clean it with the iodine.” She nodded toward her kit as she began to prep herself for the transfusion. Mulder looked up at her with questioning eyes, but he was clearly in no state to resist her. 

She watched him carefully as her blood pumped through the thin tubes into his arm, praying to every power she could think of that this was what he needed - that doing this would transfer whatever protection she had to him.

After a few long minutes, she pulled out her needle and bandaged her own arm, nodding at Malik to do the same. Then, glancing up at Scully, Malik stood to give her and Mulder room. As he stood, Scully saw his tired eyes, and wondered, how much longer could he last? How much longer would any of them last?

She shook away the thought and kissed Mulder on the forehead. “How are you feeling now?”

He smiled weakly up at her. “You didn’t have to do that, Scully. I’m fine, really…”

She shot him a warning look and he trailed off sheepishly. “I want to get you to the hospital and run some more tests. Do you think you can walk?”

He nodded, and she positioned herself under his right shoulder. As he stood up, Agent Malik hurried over to support his other side. Scully reached out a foot to shut the car door behind them and the three of them began the slow walk back to her car.

Before they had gotten a quarter of the way to the DC side of the bridge, the light suddenly shifted. All three of them looked up at the same time and stopped short. 

Hovering completely silently, not more than a hundred feet above them, was a huge, black aircraft. Scully turned to look at Mulder, who was gazing up in childlike wonder. This must be one of the aircraft he saw a few weeks ago, when Tad took him to some secret research facility. But what was it doing here?

From the underbelly of the ship, a beam of soft blue light washed over them. Was this an attack? Were they being abducted? Or could it be that they would all be saved by this mysterious aircraft?

Without a word, and, apparently, without a thought for Agent Malik standing on his other side, or the other people who were getting out of their cars to look at the aircraft, Mulder turned to Scully, tipped her head up to his and kissed her, one hand on her lower back and the other caressing her face as they stood together in the pale blue light coming from above.

“I guess this is it?” she said, an almost-smile playing across her lips.

“If the world is ending,” he said, smiling back at her, “there’s no one I’d rather be her to see it with.”

As they both looked back up at the sky, he slid his hand into hers and they waited for what would come next, together.


End file.
